Being and betterness

Utilitas

Volumn 22, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 285-302

  Johansson, Jens ^a  

^a STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

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EID: 79956369555     PISSN: 09538208     EISSN: 17416183     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0953820810000208     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. See e.g. J. Broome, 'Goodness is Reducible to Betterness: The Evil of Death is the Value of Life', The Good and the Economical, ed. P. Koslowski and Y. Shionoya (Berlin, 1993), p. 77;
2. K. Bykvist, 'The Benefits of Coming into Existence', Philosophical Studies 135 (2007), pp. 335-62;
3. D. Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford, 1984), p. 489.
4. N. Holtug, 'On the Value of Coming into Existence', The Journal of Ethics 5 (2001), pp. 361-84;
5. M. Roberts, 'Can it Ever Be Better Never to Have Existed At All? Person-Based Consequentialism and a New Repugnant Conclusion', Journal of Applied Philosophy 20 (2003), pp. 159-85. Roberts concentrates on the view that existence can be worse for a person than non-existence.
6. Palle Yourgrau is an exception (by which I mean that he denies actualism, not that he succeeds in exemplifying properties or relations without being actual). See his 'The Dead', The Journal of Philosophy 86 (1987), pp. 84-101.
7. J. Parsons, 'Axiological Actualism', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (2002), pp. 137-47, at p. 139.
8. Cf. Bykvist, 'Violations of Normative Invariance: Some Thoughts on Shifty Oughts', Theoria 73 (2007), pp. 98-120, at p. 101n.: 'One could . . . identify merely possible people with certain complexes of actually existing properties.' If such complexes exist, this suggestion leads to the view that merely possible people exist.
9. Roberts, 'Can it Ever Be Better Never to Have Existed At All?', p. 168.
10. This is probably because it does not have any capacity for mental states (nor does, of course, Nora in w2). Cf. Section VI below.
11. Holtug says that he got this way of respecting actualism from Wlodek Rabinowicz (in personal communication): Holtug, 'On the Value of Coming into Existence', p. 374n. In fact, when I discussed my ideas with Rabinowicz in May 2007, it emerged that what he had had in mind was closer to my own view (introduced in Section V below) than to Holtug's.
12. Cf. Bykvist, 'The Benefits of Coming into Existence', p. 346.
13. Someone might think that Holtug uses the phrase 'no value' to mean zero value. On the contrary, however, he emphasizes that he does not: 'On the Value of Coming into Existence', p. 381.
14. Bykvist, too, seems to overestimate the importance of whether S's non-existence has zero value for S. He devotes several pages to this question: see 'The Benefits of Coming into Existence', pp. 342-7 (as well as elsewhere in the article). True, in contrast to the relevant passages in Holtug, Bykvist does not appear to be concerned exclusively with zero intrinsic value for S on those pages. But that hardly justifies the preoccupation with whether S's non-existence has zero value for S, for anyone who takes S's existence to be extrinsically better for S than S's non-existence is very likely to hold that S's nonexistence has negative - not zero - extrinsic value for S.
15. Cf. F. Feldman, 'Some Puzzles about the Evil of Death', The Philosophical Review 100 (1991), pp. 205-27, at p. 216.
16. Of course, EV2 itself does not violate actualism.
17. To say that something has basic intrinsic value is to say that it has intrinsic value in the most fundamental way. For instance, given a simple form of hedonism, states of affairs with positive basic intrinsic value have the form S experiencing pleasure to degree n at time t. For more on basic intrinsic value, see G. Harman, 'Toward a Theory of Intrinsic Value', The Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967), pp. 792-804
18. and F. Feldman, 'Basic Intrinsic Value', Philosophical Studies 99 (2000), pp. 319-46. They are concerned with intrinsic value simpliciter rather than intrinsic value for a person. But regardless of whether we want to determine a world's intrinsic value simpliciter or its intrinsic value for a person, we need to appeal to the basic, as opposed to non-basic, intrinsic values (either simpliciter or for a person) of the states of affairs that obtain in that world. Otherwise there will be double-counting and other problems.
19. 'Prudence for Changing Selves', Utilitas 18 (2006), pp. 264-83, at pp. 273-4
20. , and 'Violations of Normative Invariance'.
21. In 'Person-Affecting Moralities', The Repugnant Conclusion, ed. J. Ryberg and T. Tännsjö (Dordrecht, 2004), pp. 136-7, it appears that Holtug intends the following 'Wide Person-affecting Principle' to allow that an outcome, C, where everyone is badly off is worse (simpliciter) than an outcome, D, where there are no individuals, regardless of whether C or D obtains: 'An outcome, O1, cannot be better (worse) than another outcome, O2, if there is no one for whom, were O1 to obtain, O1 would be better (worse) than O2, and no one for whom, were O2 to obtain, O2 would be worse (better) than O1.' However, if D obtains, there is no one - and hence no one for whom, were C to obtain, C would be worse than D, and no one for whom, were D to obtain, D would be better than C. So, the principle entails that, if D obtains, C cannot be worse than D.
22. It is particularly cases of this kind that are usually referred to as instances of the 'non-identity problem'. See Parfit, Reasons and Persons, part IV.
23. Indeed, some philosophers are drawn to certain versions of 'person-regarding morality' precisely because they want to defend this asymmetry. Clearly, however, there are other reasons to find 'person-regarding morality' attractive: see e.g. Holtug, 'Person- Affecting Moralities', pp. 137-8.